In the new issue of Regulation, economist Pierre Lemieux argues that the recent oil price decline is at least partly the result of increased supply from the extraction of shale oil. The increased supply allows the economy to produce more goods, which benefits some people, if not all of them. Thus, contrary to some commentary in the press, cheaper oil prices cannot harm the economy as a whole.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

Tag: antidumping

When China joined the WTO in December 2001, one of the many terms it agreed to was to allow the United States to continue to treat it as a “non-market economy” under U.S. antidumping law for a period of 15 years. China has regretted that concession ever since, and there are precious few gestures that would win more goodwill from the Chinese government than a decision by President Obama to graduate China to market economy status now.

A ruling last month from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit making it illegal to apply the U.S. Countervailing Duty Law (anti-subsidy law) to imports from non-market economies gives the president the perfect opening to make the change now. From the perspective of a free trader, that solution is far from ideal: it preserves domestic industries’ access to the antidumping law and countervailing duty laws, both of which produce egregiously punitive duties on imports and are ripe for serious reform or outright repeal.

But the benefit of granting market economy status to China now is that it will help slow, and likely reverse the deterioration in bilateral economic relations. And that would be an important benefit for all of us.

At the very beginning of the Obama administration, Scott Lincicome and I urged the new president to consider more than just the litany of gripes so often heard at home and to recognize that China has its own justifiable concerns about U.S. policy:

The time has come to seriously consider carrots and not just sticks—particularly since the pain from the sticks is not limited to its intended targets, but is felt in the United States and in other countries, given the transnational nature of supply chains. President Obama would invigorate the relationship if he were to grant China “market economy” treatment in anti-dumping cases. While such a reform would take very little out of petitioning industries’ hides, the gesture would win vast sums of goodwill from the

Chinese—goodwill needed to resolve more important issues going forward. Indeed, repeal of the non-market economy (NME) designation presents a “win-win” scenario for several reasons.

First, graduation from NME status is one of the Chinese government’s top international

trade priorities. China wants to be treated like all other major economies, and accordingly, the Chinese government is likely willing to make important concessions in other contested areas of trade policy to achieve market economy status. But the longer we wait to grant market economy status to China, the less valuable that concession becomes. Under the rules governing China’s accession to the WTO, the United States must repeal China’s NME designation by 2016. Thus, the value of that “concession”

will be greater in 2009—seven years early—than it will be in 2010 or 2012. Much beyond

2012, and the concession looks a bit like Confederate money.

Second, China’s NME designation has drawn intense criticism from domestic consuming industries, trade policy experts, and U.S. trade partners because of its incongruous application (for example, Russia was deemed a “market economy” in 2002, yet still is not a WTO member, while China became a WTO member in 2001) and the latitude for abuse of administrative discretion it affords. Also, the relatively recent change in policy that opened the door to countervailing duty cases against China has sparked controversy about whether NME treatment in anti-dumping cases should still be permissible.

U.S. revocation of China’s NME status would alleviate many of those domestic concerns at virtually no cost to domestic petitioning industries, but petitioners value NME because of the trade-suppressing uncertainty the process engenders. It is important that President Obama understand that our trade relationship with China has been mutually beneficial, that the rhetoric about the impact of unfair Chinese practices has been highly exaggerated, and that unnecessary provocation could open a Pandora’s Box of economic problems.

Earlier this year, the Cato Institute published this paper, which describes the self-flagellating nature of the U.S. antidumping law. Nearly 80 percent of all U.S. antidumping measures imposed between 2000 and 2009 (130 of 164 measures) restrict imports of intermediate goods—inputs required by U.S. producers for their own production processes.

Antidumping duties on magnesium, polyvinyl chloride, and hot-rolled steel, for example, enable petitioning U.S. companies that often dominate domestic supply of raw materials to foreclose alternative sources and then thrust higher prices on their U.S. customers. But those customers—U.S. producers of auto parts, paint, and appliances—who consume the now-restricted raw materials to produce higher value-added goods and who might otherwise create jobs, are instead made less profitable and less competitive, burdening the broader economy.

But here’s the kicker. The statute itself forbids the administering authorities from considering the economic impact of antidumping restrictions on those firms or on the economy at large. The well-being of the petitioning industry is all that matters and the collateral damage to downstream industries and the overall economy is to be ignored.

Now, the high-profile antidumping and countervailing duty cases recently initiated against solar panels from China are shining some fresh light on this outrage. A group called the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE), which represents the portion of the U.S. solar industry that is downstream of the solar panel producers (the producers’ customers), is asking the cases be dropped or settled. CASE, representing 145 member companies that employ over 14,000 workers in solar project development, logistics, construction, and installation, argues:

The severe tariffs [being sought] would have a very damaging effect on the solar industry in the United States and would fundamentally undermine many years of effort by all of us who care about the future of solar power …

In simple dollar terms, [the] petition threatens the planned installation of solar electric power systems in the amount of $11 billion in 2012 and the potential installation of $60 billion currently in the total pipeline …

By asking government to interfere and artificially increase the price (equivalent to putting on a high tax) will only hinder the deployment, cost thousands of jobs … and further negatively impact an already shaky economy.

There is no good reason for arguments like these—and the facts supporting them—to be ignored in trade remedies cases. Several other major countries that have antidumping and countervailing duty laws on their books employ a so-called public interest provision that directs the authorities to deny duties when the likely costs are demonstrated to exceed any benefits to the petitioning industry. (See page 18 for an elaboration.)

It is difficult to fathom how an administration that begs U.S. businesses to invest and hire would not be pushing hard for this particular reform. After all, the administration acknowledges the importance of ensuring downstream producers have access to imported inputs. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has argued this point in its complaint against Chinese export restrictions at the World Trade Organization. And the president himself described how the competitiveness of U.S. firms is hurt by restrictions on imported inputs when he signed into law the Manufacturer’s Enhancement Act last year.

But then again, incongruities in this administration’s economic policies seem to be the rule, not the exception. In the solar panel case, the president has offered his rhetorical support (at least) to the petitioners, even though their success would drive up the cost of already-too-expensive solar power, reducing demand for an energy source the president has been advocating and subsidizing with the incentive of 30 percent tax credits.

I suppose the White House has determined that the cost of import duties—to consumers up front and to taxpayers through the a much higher tax credit—is worth the benefit of having a Chinese scapegoat to take the heat off the president for Solyndra’s failure.

Earlier this year, the Cato Institute published a study of mine titled “Economic Self-Flagellation: How U.S. Antidumping Policy Subverts the National Export Initiative.” The thrust of the paper is that most U.S. antidumping measures restrict and tax the importation of crucial raw materials and intermediate goods used by U.S. producers to make their own final goods. Accordingly, these antidumping measures—imposed for the benefit of one or two or a few firms in less competitive upstream industries—raise the costs of production for downstream U.S. producers and undermine their ability to compete at home and abroad.

The paper contains many statistics and details, and makes a very practical case for antidumping reform. But if you want just the highlights and would prefer to absorb them through a more passive medium, my Cato colleagues Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg have produced an excellent, 3-and-a-half-minute video, which gets straight to the point:

On the other hand, if you can’t get enough original research on U.S. antidumping policy, please visit our growing online library of antidumping resources (most, but not all, of the content there pertains to antidumping policy).

Public angst over China’s rise and the threat of populist currency legislation have prompted speculation about a U.S.-China “Trade War.” With the 2012 elections still a whole year away, there is ample opportunity for campaigning politicians to ignite that fuse.

But pyrotechnics aren’t necessary. Rather than a 1930s-style free-for-all, a trade war—if one were to begin—is more likely to be of the lowercase, “rules-based” variety, where trade restrictions are imposed in compliance (or under the pretense of compliance) with global trade rules. Many of the battles would be waged behind the façade of so-called trade remedy laws.

Antidumping and countervailing duty measures are the most commonly invoked forms of “contingent protectionism” permitted under World Trade Organization rules. Those rules allow member governments to maintain and administer national antidumping and countervailing duty laws to remedy—through the imposition of customs duties—the effects of imports determined to be sold at unfairly low prices (antidumping) or determined to be unfairly subsidized by a government (countervailing). But imposing “remedies” under these laws is contingent upon certain conditions being met. Two core conditions are that the administering authorities need to demonstrate that the imports in question are being dumped or subsidized, and that those dumped or subsidized imports are causing or threatening material injury to the domestic industry.

A determination expected tomorrow from the U.S. International Trade Commission offers a case in point. The Commission will vote on the question of whether dumped and subsidized imports of multilayered wood flooring (MLWF) from China are causing or threatening material injury to the U.S. MLWF industry. An affirmative determination could invite Chinese retaliation because the evidence of a causal connection between imports from China and injury to the U.S. industry is weak to non-existent. If the U.S. government is going to stretch or skirt the evidentiary standards established by domestic law and international treaty, the Chinese government may be inclined to do the same. (In fact, the Chinese government is already alleged to have broken those rules – and the United States is seeking recourse in the WTO – when it imposed antidumping and countervailing duties on U.S. chicken exports in 2010.)

Multilayered wood flooring is a floor covering product—used for the same practical purposes as hardwood flooring, tile, and carpeting. Sales of MLWF are highly dependent upon new housing starts and remodeling expenditures, both of which tanked when the housing bubble burst in 2008. As a result of U.S. housing starts declining from a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.1 million units in February 2008 to just 505,000 units in March 2009, as well as the large decline in remodeling activity over the same period, MLWF industry prices, shipments, revenues, and profits declined substantially, as did imports from China and other countries. But since the second quarter of 2009, housing starts have been stable at about 600,000 units per year and remodeling activity has been steady at about $112 billion per year.

Importantly for the injury analysis, this period of stability in housing starts and renovation activity enables an analysis that isolates the effects of imports on the domestic industry. And what is evident is that, as domestic consumption of MLWF picked up, so did U.S. imports, producer shipments, revenues, and profits (from -9.9 percent in 2009 to -1.0 percent in the first half of 2011). Increasing volumes of subject imports correlate with an improving condition of the domestic industry. Throughout the period of stabilization, prices in the U.S. market have been steady, as well. If imports from China were to have an injurious effect on the domestic industry, one would expect the increasing volume of such imports to drive down prices in the United States. But imports from China, on average, do not underprice domestic MLWF. According to the public version of the USITC Staff Report in this matter:

…prices for MLWF from China were below those for U.S.-produced MLWF in 60 of 110 instances; margins of underselling ranged from 1.5 to 36.4 percent. In the remaining 50 instances, prices for MLWF imported from China were above those for U.S.-produced MLWF; margins of overselling ranged from 0.1 to 30.4 percent.

An affirmative finding of injurious dumping and/or subsidization from the USITC tomorrow would require disregard of these and other crucial facts and would warrant closer scrutiny of the antidumping regime. It would also invite similar actions from Chinese trade remedies authorities and then who know where it will lead.

President Obama claims to support America’s exporting and so-called “green jobs” industries, but he also likes rules that restrict the importation of critical inputs to those industries. Austin Bragg and I produced a short video detailing how antidumping duties serve to nudge American manufacturers offshore or out of business. The examples we cite are American manufactured products that fall squarely into the category of “green.”

Rhetorically, President Obama is a champion of industry—as long as it’s green. To put our money where his mouth is, the president has already devoted over $100 billion in direct subsidies and tax credits to promote investment in solar panel, wind harnessing, lithium ion battery, and other industries he deems crucial to “winning the future.” (See Economic Report of the President, 2011, P. 129, Box 6-2 “Clean Energy Investments in the Recovery Act” for a list of some of those subsidies.) Concerning those industries, the president said in his 2010 SOTU address:

Countries like China are moving even faster… I’m not going to settle for a situation where the United States comes in second place or third place or fourth place in what will be the most important economic engine of the future.

To be sure, I am opposed to industrial policy, which presumes that one person or a cabal of self-anointed soothsayers knows how the future will unfold. But the story I am about to share is, I think, instructive in describing endemic policy dissonance within this administration and speaks to what even the president’s staunchest supporters describe as half-heartedness and an incapacity or unwillingness to follow through. Some chalk it up to indifference, but it’s really an aversion to making choices that could offend potential supporters.

While the president talks up the solar panel industry and commits our resources to its development, other policies of his administration undermine its success and encourage offshoring of production and the jobs that go with it. Dow Corning is one of the world’s largest producers of silicones, which are the most crucial components of solar panel production. The foremost ingredient in these silicones is silicon metal, which costs nearly twice the world market price in the United States because of antidumping restrictions on imports of the raw material from China and Russia (two of the world’s largest suppliers). Under U.S. antidumping law, Dow Corning and all other consumers of silicon metal were forbidden from participating formally in the proceedings that lead to the imposition of the duties.

As I described in a recent Cato policy paper, this is more than just tough luck for a few companies. This is economic self-flagellation on a grand scale. The antidumping statute prohibits consideration of the impact of prospective duties on downstream industries or on the economy as a whole, yet policymakers—having been steamrolled by the pro-antidumping lobby—have given scant consideration to the idea that this is plainly stupid policy, particularly in a globally integrated economy characterized by transnational supply chains and cross-border investment. In such an environment, if one hopes the best for the country’s value-added industries, there should be no restrictions on raw material inputs ever (a policy being embraced by other governments around the world).

Alas, the silicon metal restrictions constitute a big problem for Dow Corning and other industrial consumers of silicon metal, but a bigger problem for the economy. To compete with producers of silicones—the solar panel industries—in Europe, Japan, Canada, and China, Dow Corning is forced to consider moving production abroad so that it is not at such a large cost disadvantage from the outset. As Dow Corning officials put it in a very informative letter:

If Dow Corning were to move the production occurring within its Kentucky operations to any country outside the U.S., it would be more competitive by simply having access to the same global supply of raw materials as all other competitors.

Dow Corning could move offshore, a move it would prefer not to make, and probably recover the costs of the transition in short order. But doing so would reduce U.S. economic activity and destroy U.S. jobs, which would have a more lasting adverse impact. So, in an effort to avoid offshoring its operations—a move that one would think the administration would welcome—Dow Corning submitted an application to have some of its silicone production facilities in Kentucky designated as a Foreign Trade Subzone. The key policy objective of foreign trade zones, according to the former president of the National Association of Foreign Trade Zones is:

The optimization of economic development in the United States creating jobs, investment and value-added activity. The current regulations strike a balance that considers antidumping and countervailing duty petitioners, importers and U.S. manufacturers. Imported products that are made with components that may be dumped or subsidized are not subject to antidumping duty or countervailing duty. If these duties can be avoided by locating a factory in a foreign country, the Board should at least consider allowing it to happen here for export so that American workers can benefit. That is what the regulation achieves.

Basically, Dow Corning was proposing that to balance its need for access to world-priced silicon metal with the country’s need for economic activity and jobs, it would bring in silicon metal from foreign sources, including silicon metal from China and Russia, to be transformed into silicons in that subzone. Antidumping duties on silicon metals that were used to make silicones that were subsequently exported without first “entering the commerce of the United States” would be waived, while antidumping duties on silicon metals used to make silicones sold in the United States would be subject to the full payment of duties.

But during the period in which the FTZ application was pending, an army of professional antidumping law supporters—the Committee to Support U.S. Trade Laws (CSUSTL), the United Steelworkers Union, the Steel Manufacturers Association, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), and others—argued that granting the designation would serve only to circumvent the antidumping order, and that the well-being of the petitioner was all that mattered under the antidumping law.

After hearings, several comment periods, and deliberation the Foreign Trade Zones Board granted Dow Corning’s FTZ request, but “subject to a restriction prohibiting the admission of foreign status silicon metal subject to an antidumping or countervailing duty order,” thereby negating the entire purpose of the application and effectively daring Dow Corning to shut down its Kentucky operations and move abroad. That decision was signed by the acting assistant secretary for import administration—the same person charged with overseeing the Commerce Department’s notoriously pro-petitioner, antidumping regime, and, for the record, a person who answers to President Obama.

Did the president know what was at stake and look the other way? Or did he not even know? Neither answer reflects particularly well on a man claiming to have a plan for job creation and economic growth.

During the decade from January 2000 through December 2009, the U.S. government imposed 164 antidumping measures on a variety of products from dozens of countries. A total of 130 of those 164 measures restricted (and in most cases, still restrict) imports of intermediate goods and raw materials used by downstream U.S. producers in the production of their final products. Those restrictions raise the costs of production for the downstream firms, weakening their capacity to compete with foreign producers in the United States and abroad.

In all of those cases, trade-restricting antidumping measures were imposed without any of the downstream companies first having been afforded opportunities to demonstrate the likely adverse impact on their own business operations. This is by design. The antidumping statute forbids the administering authorities from considering the impact of prospective duties on consuming industries—or on the economy more broadly—when weighing whether or not to impose duties.

That asymmetry has always been insane, but given the emergence and proliferation of transnational production and supply chains and cross-border investment (i.e., globalization)—evidenced by the fact that 55% of all U.S. import value consists of raw materials, intermediate goods, and capital equipment (the purchases of U.S. producers)—it is now nothing short of self-flagellation.

Most of those import-consuming, downstream producers—those domestic victims of the U.S. antidumping law—are also struggling U.S. exporters. In fact those downstream companies are much more likely to export and create new jobs than are the firms that turn to the antidumping law to restrict trade. Antidumping duties on magnesium, polyvinyl chloride, and hot-rolled steel, for example, may please upstream, petitioning domestic producers, who can subsequently raise their prices and reap greater profits. But those same “protective” duties are extremely costly to U.S. producers of auto parts, paint, and appliances, who require those inputs for their own manufacturing processes.

President Obama acknowledges as much. On August 11, 2010, at a White House signing ceremony, the president offered the following rationale for a bill that he was about to sign into law:

The Manufacturing Enhancement Act of 2010 will create jobs, help American companies compete, and strengthen manufacturing as a key driver of our economic recovery. And here’s how it works. To make their products, manufacturers—some of whom are represented here today—often have to import certain materials from other countries and pay tariffs on those materials. This legislation will reduce or eliminate some of those tariffs, which will significantly lower costs for American companies across the manufacturing landscape—from cars to chemicals; medical devices to sporting goods. And that will boost output, support good jobs here at home, and lower prices for American consumers.

Higher input prices stemming from antidumping measures are only the first assault on these downstream firms. The next wave usually takes the form of stiffer competition from firms in countries where there are no antidumping duties on the critical input. As a result, the foreign competition often operates at a cost advantage in the United States and in other markets that enables it to sell profitably at lower prices than U.S. firms can charge.

Accordingly, the profits of downstream firms are squeezed by both higher costs, due to import restrictions, and lower revenues, due to lost sales. As a consequence, countless U.S. producers in downstream industries—including firms that were once thriving in the United States and foreign markets—have suffered severe losses, contraction, and bankruptcy.

Again, the administration is well aware of this connection. Indeed, the U.S. Trade Representative launched a formal complaint against China in the WTO for that country’s restrictions on exports of certain crucial raw materials, providing the following rationale:

China maintains a number of measures that restrain exports of raw material inputs for which it is the top, or near top, world producer. These measures skew the playing field against the United States and other countries by creating substantial competitive benefits for downstream Chinese producers that use the inputs in the production and export of numerous processed steel, aluminum and chemical products and a wide range of further processed products.

Moreover, the USTR demonstrates an appreciation for the fact that restrictions on upstream products generate downstream costs that compound at successive stages in the production supply chain:

These raw material inputs are used to make many processed products in a number of primary manufacturing industries, including steel, aluminum and various chemical industries. These products, in turn become essential components in even more numerous downstream products.

If you need more evidence that the antidumping status quo is weighted heavily against import-consuming U.S. industries, consider this gem: three of the nine mineral raw materials that are the subject of the U.S. case against China in the WTO (magnesium, silicon metal, and coke) are simultaneously subject to U.S antidumping restrictions. That’s right! With our own import restrictions firmly in place, the United States is suing China to remove its export restrictions on the same products. That sounds like an excellent use of resources.

As a final indignity, many U.S. exporters suffer the wrath of foreign antidumping restrictions and other forms of protectionism that are often the result of persistent U.S. opposition to antidumping reform, as well as outright retribution for specific U.S. antidumping actions. Among recent victims are U.S. exporters to China of automobiles, fiber optic cable, chicken, grain, and paper. In countless ways, the antidumping status quo subverts U.S. competitiveness and is an albatross around the neck of the U.S. economy.

To bestow real and enduring benefits upon the U.S. economy, the antidumping law should be reformed to—at a minimum—give legal standing to manufacturers and workers in consuming industries; require the administering authorities to conduct an analysis of the economic impact of prospective antidumping duties and to deny imposition if the costs exceed a certain threshold; and require that any antidumping duties imposed not be excessive.